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Python's "batteries included" approach means that a lot of common tasks have high-level convenience functions for them. For example, if you want to read all the lines from a file into an array (list, in Python), you could do something like:
with open(filename) as f:
lines = f.readlines()
Most of us, when generating a UUID, will reach for a library to do it. Even a UUIDv4, which is just a random number, presents challenges: doing randomness correctly is hard, and certain bits within the UUID are reserved for metadata about what kind of UUID we're generating.
But Gretchen's co-worker didn't reach for a library. What they did reach for was… regular expressions?
We like trains here at Error'd, and you all seem to like trains too. That must be the main reason we get so many submissions about broken information systems.
"Pass," said Jozsef . I think that train might have crashed already.
There are real advantages to taking a functional programming approach to expressing problems. Well, some problems, anyway.
Kevin sends us this example of elegant, beautiful functional code in C#:
Greg was fighting with an academic CMS, and discovered that a file called write_helper.js was included on every page. It contained this single function:
function document_write(s)
{
document.write(s);
}
Gretchen saw this line in the front-end code for their website and freaked out:
let bucket = new AWS.S3({ params: { Bucket: 'initech-logos' } });
One thing I've learned by going through our reader submissions over the years is that WTFs never start with just one mistake. They're a compounding sequence of systemic failures. When we have a "bad boss" story, where an incompetent bully puts an equally incompetent sycophant in charge of a project, it's never just about the bad boss- it's about the system that put the bad boss in that position. For every "Brillant" programmer, there's a whole slew of checkpoints which should have stopped them before they went too far.
With all that in mind, today we're doing a news roundup about the worst boss of them all, the avatar of Dunning-Kruger, Elon Musk. Because over the past month, a lot has happened, and there are enough software and IT related WTFs that I need to talk about them.
Because we still have the NWS, I learned that "A winter storm will continue to bring areas of heavy snow and ice from the Great Lakes through New England today into tonight." I'm staying put, and apparently so is Dave L.'s delivery driver.
Dave L. imagines the thoughts of this driver who clearly turned around and headed straight home. "Oh, d'ya mean I've got to take these parcels somewhere!? in this weather!? I can't just bring them back?"